Warm Selection Page

Studio Acrylics: Craftsman-Style Paintings

Selection Page—Warm / Hot / Primary Series (Click Pictures Below or at Bottom)

Other Series' on Home Page

As a reaction against the banal design found in mass-produced goods flooding the market during the Industrial Revolution, the Arts & Crafts movement celebrated a return to the hand-made, artistically embellished goods, where individual craftsmanship was exalted over mechanical production.

The Craftsman style found its way into everything from architecture to everyday home and kitchen products, and from two-dimensional art to book and type design.

In architecture, for example, natural, hand-cut materials, human-scaled interiors, and a general blending with nature were emphasized.

My Craftsman-style paintings exhibit a rough-hewn, hand-crafted touch, utilizing leafy, organic shapes echoing Art Nouveau, and warm, rich colors. The dark outlining, reminiscent of Tiffany stained glass, dynamic compositions and golden backlit skies found in my paintings lend a 1930's Art Deco feel to the work as well.

My work is furthermore a blend of the Craftsman style, California Impressionism, and influences found in Modern Art, typified by its simplicity of compositional idea, an emphasis on the materials of painting, and a contemporary, frameless presentation commonly using 1+1/2-inch deep canvases with painted edges.

About Craftsman-Style Paintings:

Most people think of Craftsman style as applied to residential architecture, by such famous designers as Frank Lloyd Wright and Bernard Maybeck, and also to home fixtures like Tiffany's stained-glass lamps. Actually, the Craftsman style grew out of the Arts and Crafts movement of the early twentieth century, championed in the United States by the English ex-patriate designer William Morris.